Allahabad, is the holy town at the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges Rivers. Allahabad (now called Prayagraj) is the meeting point of the rivers, the Sangam, which is believed to have great soul-cleansing powers and is a major pilgrimage site. It’s even more holy as the invisible Saraswati River is believed to join the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers at this point, and every 12 years is the scene of the extraordinary Kumbh Mela.
Allahabad or City Of God (the name is Muslim) is situated in the Southern part of Utrapradesh. It is an important city for Hindus, as it is meant to be the site where Brahma offered a sacrifice after creating the world. So saying, the city is a major pilgrimage site and attracts Hindus from all over the world. Having been a part of the Mauryan, Gupta, Mughal and British Empires the city is a melting pot of culture, architecture and religion. It is also one of the largest cities in the area with a population of over 1,207,000 and several temples and forts to explore.
Sunday, October 19. Varanasi to Allahabad
We had a pleasant breakfast and were ready to leave before 9:30 am. A man from the agency came to escort us to the car via the process of the boat and the alleyways, but he seemingly spoke no English so actually made our view of the agency even worse than it already had been with the terrible guide we had had the previous day. The journey to Allahabad took under three hours and we were in a four star large hotel, Hotel Kanha Shyam , with little character, before 1230.
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Here a very good guide Rohan met us and said he would take us on tour from 1:30 pm. So I had a short siesta before this. With them went out in the car again to the river edge where the Ganges, second river the Yamuna and a silent river underground Saraswati River meet. Rohan described the 12 yearly festival that took place in January and February at this site where something like 12 million pilgrims came, all being accommodated in tents alongside the rivers. They have to walk the 12 to 15 km from the railway station, as no cars or tuk tuks were allowed because of these immense crowds. It sounded like a recipe for disaster and I think this year there had been a pretty serious disaster.
So we boarded a boat that took us to this point of the meeting of the rivers and were able to see pilgrims suspended on a platform between two boats so that they could emerge themselves safely in the rivers. This was meant to wash away all their sins. During the 12 yearly festival, a rope is in position and the boats follow each other along this and back to shore after the immersion process: this avoids mayhem.
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| What it looks like during the pilgrimage |
We then drove to a museum, which was the house of Indira Gandhi‘s parents, where she was born and grew up in a lifestyle that seemed very European and not truly Indian at all. We were frequently stared at for a long time by locals who had never seen a white face before And we found this quite disconcerting.
Indira Gandhi was born in Allahabad (now known as Prayagraj) on November 19, 1917. Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a prominent leader in the Indian independence movement and the first Prime Minister of India. On 31 October 1984, two of Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards shot her with their service weapons in the garden of the prime minister's residence at New Delhi, allegedly in revenge for Operation Blue Star, the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by the Indian Army.
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Then we drove past a cathedral built by the British in the 1920s and many schools which had also been founded by the British. I think there were 16 prestigious colleges here we also saw the imposing university buildings and Allahabad being a site of the third oldest university in India.
Then on to a large site, mainly being visited by strict Muslims, where the Mogul Babo had constructed many temples in the mid 17th century. Khusro Bagh is a large walled garden and burial complex. The four sandstone mausoleums within this walled garden, present an exquisite example of Mughal architecture. The design of its main entrance, the surrounding gardens, and the three-tier tomb of Shah Begum, who died in 1604, has been attributed to Aqa Reza, Jahangir’s principal court artist.
Finally back to the deserted hotel, somewhat sad that we had probably had our best guide today but we only had four hours. We wandered around the hotel and found the bar but they would not tell us what drinks they had to offer as we had to provide a phone to read the QL codes. We went down to reception and commented on this and they said yes of course we had to read it from our phone! So a quiet evening in a very large and fairly pleasant room awaiting what might happen to us tomorrow, the start of the Diwali festival.
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